Area man wins lotto drawing

PIERRE — Larry Abernathy, of Chamberlain, on Thursday claimed a $98,716 Dakota Cash jackpot at the Pierre Lottery office, according to a Lottery news release.

He purchased the Quick Pick ticket at Casey’s General Store in Chamberlain for the Wednesday drawing. The store will receive a bonus of nearly $5,000 for selling the winning ticket. Abernathy is a regular customer at Casey’s and generally buys a ticket for each of the state’s four lotto games for both weekly drawings.

Abernathy first suspected he had a winning ticket when he checked his numbers against the Lottery website Thursday morning. A quick trip to the store confirmed it.

“I ran the ticket under the checker at Casey’s and it gave me a ‘see the Lottery’ message. Mary (the store manager) said ‘you must have won,’ and she checked it on her terminal to make sure,” Abernathy said.

Abernathy went about his business as usual after learning he’d won the jackpot, doing some routine work at his apartments before heading home. His employee at the apartment complex heard the news from Larry before Arlys, his wife of 50 years.

“My employee said to me, ‘Did you hear somebody in Chamberlain won the jackpot?’ and I said, ‘Yeah, you’re looking at him,’ ” Abernathy said.

His wife wasn’t as easy to convince.

“I thought he was giving me a line,” Arlys Abernathy said. “I told him I had to see it to believe it. So he showed me the print-out Mary had given him with the winning numbers circled.”

The Abernathys own the Happy Campers Campground in Chamberlain and plan to use some of their winnings (which amounted to $74,037 after taxes) to make some planned additions to the campground, including more sites and some storage units. They also have a grown son and 6-year-old granddaughter. Their first stop after leaving the Lottery office was at their son’s home to tell him the good news.

“I think the best part about winning will be when we tell our boy and see what he thinks,” Larry said.

Dakota Cash is played only in South Dakota. The odds of winning the jackpot are 1 in 324,632. The jackpot starts again at $20,000 for the next drawing Saturday.

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